Newark

Whatever people might say in the world about Newark is wrong. Newark, like Queens and Jersey City, is ethnic, race, and class diverse beyond anywhere else I know on the planet, with a wider variety of socio-economic classes freely intermingling, especially among its artists. This latter fact cheers me. As a working class white guy from Elizabeth, I often feel uncomfortable on art scenes. The food is in the not-much-spice, brown rice, wok, pita wrap, veggie, hummus spectrum where I do not flourish. Food is not made important among the white artistic class, no matter how much they insist they know about food. It all tastes too bland to me. I know they are right. I know their food is healthier and allows them to be thin and to have smaller, more shapely asses, but it makes me sad. It makes me think of psychotic men and women milling about with a passable knowledge of Jean Genet, and thinking they are feasting when they are in the middle of a famine. My girlfriend had the brown rice chicken stir fry for lunch—very healthy, but very bland: no real oil, no spice.

I had two truck dogs from a cart: one with mustard and kraut, and the other with red onions in sauce plus a grape soda for five bucks. In Newark, they fit the dog to the roll, and since the roll is steamed, it’s a wonderful press fit, and things do not fall on your shirt. Years ago, back when I was a student at Rutgers Newark, I could get this same lunch for about a dollar and thirty cents (Hot dog cost 50 cents in 1978), but five bucks ain’t bad, and I gladly skipped the free lunch provided to me as a Dodge Poet (they didn’t have grape soda, and I have always believed that truck dogs should be washed down with grape soda. They also didn’t have truck dogs). By the way, Newark is filled with great Spanish and Southern soul food restaurants—if you know where to look. It also has some of the best fish joints—fried hard or any way you like it— this side of the south.

NJPAC eats like a neighborhood. I have never known an art organization that was so generous (to my working class way of thinking) with the grub. At the dinner provided for poets, I had the best catfish I’ve ever ate, with an amazing breading: firm, cooked just right, as well as roast beef, two kinds of chicken, and greens cooked in what I call pot liquor. Pot liquor is the liquid you get with collards, and spinach, and any green when you are trying to make it stretch. It gives greens their glory. It is a beautiful thing, and I have never seen it at any other art venue. And yes, there was the pita, carrot, healthy stuff, too—if you wanted it. My point is generosity and going overboard. There was too much food, and most of it was politically incorrect, and with it, my tears of gratitude overflowed. I was greatly moved by dinner, and I am not easily moved.

So what does any of this have to do with poetry? A lot. People getting nostalgic for Waterloo village where the festival—with one exception—has been held every two years since 1986, are crazy. I wasn’t blasted by overheard and unwanted poetry while I walked around. I wasn’t caked with mud. I wasn’t made to feel that I was lost amid a bunch of poetry addicts and I learned something: Newark, like Manhattan, is a historic lasagna, with this Baptist church (Michael Peddie Baptist) as ornate with its stained glass windows, and as beautiful with its wood carvings and marble altar as any cathedral I have seen it is right near the welfare and YMCA, and this seems right to me. Americans should not be allowed to cloister their goodies away from the poor. I was told the pipe organ cannot be renovated. A shame, since it is a mechanical wonder.

The church doesn’t look like much from outside, but when you enter it, Oh my God! And not one, but two grand pianos in perfect tune! The one I played was a 150 year old Steinway—with an amazingly delicate upper range, perfect bel canto bass, and not much volume. It was an intimate Steinway, made specifically for just such a classy church. Michael Peddie Baptist is a must see if you are in Newark. I was there to introduce the young poet Michael Cirrillo. I got there early and they let me play the Steinway. Michael asked me to play behind his first poem. The students and teachers who had gathered early (it was so jammed, they had to fill the choir loft with kids), appreciated the music, and they loved Michael. Not bad…

But nothing, at least for me, compared to hearing Marie Ponsot talk about poetry in this church. She is old. Due to a recent stroke, she speaks slowly, carefully, with long pauses. She does not try to entertain the kids, or “relate” to them. She does not speak down to anyone. She is what we would call in my old neighborhood a “true dame” (It means dignified. It means intelligent. It means singular, and lofty without malice). I sat in the back in the church, to get away from the crowds (I never consult the events schedule) and was enchanted by her slow, lilting cadence. She made me shy. I know I am in the presence of something good when I am made shy. She was just like the intimate Steinway ten feet away from where she sat. On Friday, in the year of our Lord, 2010, at this huge festival where poets are supposed to “wow” the crowds, Marie Ponsot was an intimate Steinway—a small, reflective Schumann rather than a pounding virtuoso Liszt, and this is what I like best about the Dodge festival— not the big readings (I skip ‘em), not the crowds (makes me feel like Christmas at the friggin’ mall), but this intimacy, this smell of old wood, and the voice of an old woman speaking on what she loves and what she knows. The fact that it was a couple giant steps form the YMCA made it better. Beautiful things seen in their incongruity are magnified. Beautiful things seen where everything is made to look pretty become the lies of snobs.

On the way back to my car, my girlfriend and I ran into Amiri Baraka, walking over, passed Military park, to read in the big event. It was almost dark. It was just him, no entourage. He said: “Where you been? I haven’t seen you around in while.” I told him I was working up at Binghamton, and he handed me an invite to an after-reading reading and jam. Baraka was going to show off the city he loves, and have the kind of poetry reading you can’t get in the official way. The late evening dusk was almost liquid. I took the flyers he gave me: four different bars in Newark, and each with great things happening. I found out Kamiko’s Blues people is no longer going on. He still lives on Clinton Street. It was beautiful night. I was tired, and my girlfriend was tired. If I had the strength to go, I would have—but poetry is not an event for me. I know this part of the earth—this urban dusk. It is where I lived all my life. It was good to see him to see him here, or anywhere on the earth. I went back to my hotel and fell asleep. It’s nice to be asked to parties. Going to them is another matter. Marie Ponsot was still on my mind. I wanted to rest next to that Steinway. I wanted to play it all night.